Fundamental Study on Influence of Intentional Electromagnetic Interference on IC Communication

Abstract

Low-Power intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) has been reported to cause device malfunction without disrupting the device itself via an IEMI of several volts. In this paper, we intentionally generated errors on transmitted data between ICs using Low-Power IEMI to investigate possibilities of changes in the commands executed based on transmitted data. To evaluate impacts of the Low-Power IEMI threat on transmitted data between ICs, we applied Low-Power IEMI threat to the device via power distribution network with frequency and amplitude variation. The experiment results indicated that error occurrence probability of data errors in transmitted data changes in accordance with the number of Hamming Weights of data, frequency, and amplitude of the applied interference wave. Based on these results, we speculate the influence of voltage drop caused by applying Low-Power IEMI and output status in I/O circuits.